A showdown is coming in the next few weeks over the future of Manchester United. Most supporters on the ground in the UK want the Glazer family, which also owns the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to sell the club to a group of very well-heeled fans, dubbed the "Red Knights". The Red Knights are thought to be offering a billion pounds (US $1.5 billion) for MU. You know, give or take a hundred million.
The Glazer family leaked this week that they have already turned down a bid from a mysterious Far East group that offered 50|PERCENT| more. If that was no bluff, it's hard to see how the Red Knights have a shot.
MU supporters are quixotically hoping the Glazers will sell for below market value—and then further dreaming that the new owners will use the money the Glazers left on the table to buy players in the summer transfer market. (Players in soccer are seldom traded; they're usually bought and sold for cash.) When the Glazers bought MU, they issued bonds to do it. An organization called the Supporters' Trust claims that the bond issue ($850 million at about 10|PERCENT| interest) has made the club's balance sheet too toxic to finance buying more star players.
The Glazers, who bought the team outright in 2005, claim this is untrue. Twice in the last seven years the club has sold its most well-known player to Real Madrid; the Glazers, in charge for the second sale (Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009), claim it was just a good bit of business.
The Supporters Trust is now trying to turn up the heat: if the Glazers don't sell, Supporters' Trust is going to call for a boycott of season tickets and merchandise to try to hit the Glazers in the wallet. Huge demonstrations were held outside the club's ground, Old Trafford, on Sunday when the club faced Stoke. The Supporters' Trust disavows violence, but smokebombs were fired at the club's Megastore and around Old Trafford. Not every soccer fan is sunshine-and-lollipops.
The Supporters' Trust is doomed in its mission. Soccer is big business, and this isn't chump change. The Glazer family didn't earn its billions by selling assets at below market value. If the Red Knights want to stump up fair market value, then and only then might the Glazers walk away.
The other point I'd make is that, of all the clubs in all the world, this is ironically one of the most commercial. This is perhaps the club most about business and the bottom line. MU has tremendous worldwide support, maybe more than any other club, but is at best the second-most supported club in and around Manchester. Manchester City has the most local support by a long way. Since the Munich Air Disaster of 1958, whoever's been in charge at MU has sought to build the product on the soccer pitch by building the global brand as a source of wealth. To claim that MU should now be a club left to the designs of simple supporters is a bit of a joke.